All Sparks
by Lila2
Summary: Sam falls and Dean catches him.


**Title:** "All Sparks"

**Author:** Lila

**Rating:** PG-13

**Character/Pairing:** Sam, Dean

**Spoiler:** "Pilot" with a teeny, tiny reference to "Home"

**Length: **one-shot

**Summary:** Sam falls, and Dean catches him.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own them, just borrowing them.

**Author's Note:** I found this buried in my jump drive, having forgotten I'd ever started it, and finally got around to finishing it today. I've never written anything just about the brothers, so this is a first for me, but I think it turned out nicely. Title and cut courtesy of Editors. I hope you enjoy.

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You were born into fire.

It was a scorching hot ninety-nine degrees the day you kicked your way into the world and your mother pushed and screamed and the prairie grass burned. It was only May and the flowers were just beginning to poke their heads through the earth when the weather took a turn for the nasty and the earth cracked and the trees withered and split and the world around you died while you reached for life.

When you went home for the first time in twenty-two years, a young blonde mother named Jenny pushed a box filled with your past into Dean's hands, and you held it in your lap while he drove towards the future. You pushed past the photographs of a life that wasn't yours and a woman you don't remember, and you find splintering pieces of straw trapped between sleeves of yellowing plastic.

You never knew Mary Winchester was sentimental, but then again, you never knew her at all. You don't remember that day, either of them, not the day you were born or the day your family died. You can't remember the sweat or the screams or the land burning as you gasped your first breath or your mother gasped her last. But sometimes, when you close your eyes, you can still feel the heat of the flames on your face when everything changed.

---

You wear your hair long and it's always pulled down over your forehead. Dean slicks his back with gel and tells you no self-respecting rock fan doesn't know the value of a good hair product, but you know it's a precaution, like the knife under his pillow that he pretends doesn't exist and you know could split you from gut to grin in half a second. He nags you to cut yours short, that you won't use all the hot water if you didn't have such a mane to keep clean, but you refuse. You can't cut it. You _won't_ cut it. Eventually he leaves you alone and you ignore the stab of guilt in your belly because you know he thinks it's about Jess and it is and it isn't and you're tired of keeping secrets from him, but then you remember that keeping secrets is as much a part of the family business as hunting things that go bump in the night and you feel a little better.

The love of your brother's life bounces painfully down a dirt road and you close your eyes as the Impala chugs along to your latest destination, and you run a hand through your hair, push it back off your face while the regret singes its way across your skin. You feel the pinpricks of heat sprinting across your forehead, burning their reminder of all you lost. You remember why you hate to sleep, hate to close your eyes. Jess is pinned to the ceiling and her blood is burning your skin, marking your crime, marking your mistake, marking your guilt. Her skin is so pale and her nightgown so white as it dances in the flames. The heat is so bright, wrapping its way around her in a halo of death, and in its own warped way she look looks like an angel watching over you…if not for the slash of bright red bubbling across her middle, the blood branding your sin upon your forehead.

You're dimly aware that the car is no longer moving and Dean is shaking you awake with one hand, smoothing your hair down over your forehead with the other. "You okay, Sammy?" he asks and you don't bother to correct him as you nod an affirmation. His fingers are cool against your hot skin and their motion is soothing, gentle, the way you'd imagine the mother you never had. You force a smile as soft tendrils of hair slip and cover your eyes, masking your sins. You crack a window and breathe in cold Iowa air, letting it rasp through your lungs and drive out the smoke and the flames and the pain. You press your forehead against the glass and it spreads like a winter chill cross your skin, healing the land, healing you. When you turn back to your brother you can breathe easier and Jess is no longer calling to you from your nightmares. Dean looks relieved and turns back to the road, John Fogherty's wailing filling the car. He smirks at you across the dash, the smile of a good CO – mission accomplished, baby brother fixed.

You know he felt it too, the fire reaching for him while he sprinted to safety with you safely clasped in his arms. You know he fears it too, that when he closes his eyes he sees your mother anchored to the nursery ceiling, dying in the blaze while he's helpless to fight, helpless to make it stop. But Dean isn't like you, he's not afraid your world will disintegrate in a puff of smoke the way your mother did all those years ago. Because Dean is bigger than you and braver than you and stronger than you and you know he'd walk through the flames every time if it means saving you, because that's what big brothers do.

---

Another town, another ghost, and you're standing next to your brother watching another pile of bones go down in a blaze of glory. You wonder if Dean notes the irony, or maybe the therapy, that you destroy evil things the same way they took them from you.

You'll never get used to the smell of human remains going up in flames, but it's better than the charred stench of flesh burning and curling into ash that fills your senses when you think of Jess. You wonder if your father smelled it too, every time he salted the bones and dropped a match on the kerosene, if he wears the grisly perfume of burning flesh you smell on yourself. There's a breeze tonight and you taste death and ash on your tongue every time you breathe in. You wonder how long you can do this before it seeps through your lungs and into your blood and becomes all that you are.

Dean stands beside you silently, watching the sparks flitter through the darkness like meteors shooting across the night sky. They would be beautiful, if they symbolized anything but death and destruction and evil. The land is as dry and dead as the day you were born, and you stamp out a stray spark with the sole of your sneaker. It hisses a little against the worn out rubber, and Dean glances over sharply.

"Sammy," he says. "Time to get you a pair of big boy boots."

"I like these shoes," you return and rub your foot through the dust. It catches on the soles of your sneakers, marking a pattern through the bone dry dirt. You wonder if it will be there tomorrow, or the next day, or if it will disappear with the next gust of prairie wind and it will be like you were never there to begin with. A fresh spark shoots out through the night and Dean stamps it out with his boot, digging deep in the earth, cutting a groove through its brittle exterior. You walk over it when Dean turns away from the burning pyre and beckons you towards the car, and when you look back it's still there, marking the ground with its presence. You have a feeling it will always be there, until someone ambles along and fills it in, and even then, a scar will remain.

Dean is propped up against the hood waiting for you, forehead furrowing when your sneakers slide through the dirt as you make your way towards him. "Tomorrow," Dean says. "We're getting you a pair of boots."

"I don't need a pair of boots," you insist and dig your sneakers deeper into the dirt, trying to hold your own, but the wind gusts over your trail and the dust blows back, hiding your path.

"What about next time we're running from some ugly sonofabitch and you fall flat on your face in those things?" He casts a disgusted look at your Vans.

Your eyes cling to the series of ruts his boots have branded in the earth. "You'll be there to catch me," you say and his expression softens. "Right?"

He opens your door and you slide inside, sinking into the worn fabric and breathing in history and familiarity and home. You stretch your legs and it doesn't matter what kind of shoes you're wearing because your feet slide into the grooves you've worn into the floorboards like they belong there.

Dean's door slams and the engine guns, like harnessed fire under the thin metal hood, and he turns to look at you. "I'll always save you, Sammy," he says slowly. "But you need to start thinking about saving yourself."

You buy a new pair of sneakers the next morning and they still have slippery rubber soles, but when you trail behind your brother through the parking lot, you count two pairs of footprints in the dust.

---

The next time you stop to crash, there's a chili cook off in the town square and the only available room has a single bed. You shared a bed with your brother for most of your life, and even though you're adults and haven't slept by his side in years, you pull out your wallet and push past the photo of Jess for the money to curl up next to him again.

You're still looking at the picture while Dean grabs the room key, and she's smiling at you without a care in the world, like the end isn't about to come. Dean comes up behind you and sees the picture, and nudges you with his boot, pressing against the rubber of your sneakers. "Come on, Sammy. Time for bed."

You close your wallet and Jess' happy face disappears from view, her smile disappearing into the leather folds that hold everything of value to you. You close your eyes as Dean's fingers lock around your elbow and drag you towards the room, and you try to save that memory forever, when Jess was happy and whole and the only time she went near flames was blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.

When you open your eyes you're in the bedroom and the dingy white walls are drenched crimson by the vacancy sign outside your window. You tug the curtains closed with a sharp pull and the room goes dark around you, the air stale and old. The light peeks around the curtains in eerie slivers, and when you breathe in deep and it's like being inside a grave.

Your brother goes to bed long before you're ready to, and when you climb in beside him you can smell him on the sheets, sweat and leather and Dean overtaking the musty sourness that surrounds you. The bed is small and he's only a few inches away, and you can feel the heat of him across the mattress, and when you roll to face him your hand accidentally brushes over his bicep and it's hot enough to burn. A spark ignites between you, the skin of your fingers flaming against the skin of his arm, but he doesn't wince, doesn't complain, simply rolls to face you. You can just make out his features in the dim light and he's like your father, but younger and better and less broken, and when he breathes deep there isn't a hint of scorched guilt filling him up.

"Sammy," he says and reaches out in the darkness to smooth your hair over your forehead, like when you were a little boy and he'd watch you fall asleep and guard your dreams. "Same deal tonight?"

You nod, because you can't talk, and you breathe in deep and all you smell is your brother on the air.

"Turn over," he commands and you obediently follow, turning on your side so you're watching the slivers of light peek through the curtains, and they play against the dark wall like meteors shooting across the sky.

Your brother's arms wrap around your waist and all his burning heat is pressed up against you, penetrating you, surrounding you, and you want to twist away because you've felt the same heat on your skin twice before and both times your entire life burned to dust around you, but Dean holds on tight and presses a gentle kiss to the nape of your neck.

It makes you think of your mother.

"Sweet dreams, Sammy" he whispers and his breath is like a spark floating through the inky sky, and it soothes against your skin and makes you believe you can get through the night.

You close your eyes and Jess calls to you and you want to follow her, but you feel Dean's weight against you and he keeps you firmly locked to the ground.

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